Enterprise architecture must 'refactor' for APIs, says industry exec

April 16, 2014 | By Molly Bernhart Walker

The proliferation of mobile applications and growing dependence on services built on application programming interfaces, or APIs, are driving a sea change in enterprise architecture, says one industry executive.

"Enterprise refactoring"--as John Mathon, the founder of TIBCO software calls it--could be considered service oriented architecture 2.0. "The central way to do this is to turn the existing services in your organization into reusable entities that can be leveraged by new products, outside organizations, partners or even internal projects," Mathon explains in a blog.

"Service oriented architecture [SOA] tried to get enterprises to build software as services that could be reused to build other services or applications in the enterprise. The idea of reuse was a powerful motivation for SOA," Mathon writes in another blog entry.

Apps and APIs are proving transformative for the enterprise: app stores because they make it easier to track, update, delete and review applications, and APIs because they simplify cloud-enabled services and build developer communities, says Mathon.

Mathon sees these trends converging and driving architecture changes.

"We are seeing operating systems now becoming more like the store experience for desktops," he writes.

As enterprises "get their heads above water and realize they've built services, built mobile apps, redesigned their enterprise applications, they will want to manage all of this better" through an enterprise app store, he says.